Road Trip Yellowstone

by Dina Mishev

  AMELIA EARHART

  Entering Meeteetse from the north, you might see a small memorial to Amelia Earhart. Why? The aviatrix planned on retiring to a spot near the former mining area of Kirwin, in the Shoshone National Forest southwest of Meeteetse.

  In 1934, Earhart and husband, George Putnam, went on a 2-week pack trip into the nearby mountains with Carl Dunrud, an area outfitter who also ran the Double Dee Ranch. She loved the area, bought land, and chatted with Dunrud about building her a small cabin. When she and navigator Fred Noonan disappeared over the Pacific in July 1937, Dunrud had already started construction on a simple log cabin for her. Before she took off on her flight around the world, Earhart sent Dunrud a couple of personal items, including a flight jacket and buffalo coat gifted her by actor William Hart, to store until the cabin was finished. After her death, Dunrud donated these to the Buffalo Bill Center of the West, where they are still in the permanent collection.

  ROAD TRIP 5 WILD LANDS

  Just because you leave Yellowstone National Park doesn’t mean you leave behind natural beauty and geological superlatives. Outside of the park’s East Entrance is the largest mountain mass in the entire Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, the country’s first wild horse preserve, Wyoming’s only Wild and Scenic designated river, and the Grand Canyon of the North.

  South Fork

  The North Fork Highway, aka US 14/16/20, is a designated National Scenic Byway, the Buffalo Bill Scenic Byway, and also a Wyoming Scenic Byway. It’s a gorgeous drive. Its counterpart, South Fork Road, aka WY 291, is just as stunningly beautiful, and it’s much less crowded. Any traffic jams are caused by hay trucks or cattle drives. The South Fork Valley is the heart of Cody’s cattle country.

  While the North Fork Highway parallels the North Fork of the Shoshone River for much of its length, the South Fork Road meanders alongside the South Fork of the Shoshone. The North Fork Highway takes you to the East Entrance of Yellowstone National Park. South Fork Road dead-ends at a trailhead from which you can hike to the spot farthest from a paved road in the Lower 48 states (the Thorofare region of Yellowstone).

  South Fork Road starts on the west side of Cody and goes for about 40 miles before it ends. Along the way, you’ll pass the former farms of German settlers brought to the South Fork Valley in the early 1900s by Buffalo Bill himself—he even paid for their train tickets from New York. Some of these farms are still worked by the descendants of those immigrants.

  You’ll also travel parallel to Carter Mountain. At 12,319 feet tall and 30 miles wide, it is the largest mountain mass in the entire Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. Next comes Castle Rock, the unofficial divide between the upper and lower South Fork Valley. Native Americans called this feature Ishawooa, which means “rock in the valley.” While Castle Rock is no longer known by this name, a creek at the southern end of the valley has been named Ishawooa. About 35 miles down the road, you’ll pass the TE Ranch, Buffalo Bill’s former ranch and hunting retreat. Just before the road ends at Cabin Creek, you’ll hit Deer Creek Campground. If you can’t spend the night, it makes a great picnic spot.

  Pryor Mountain Wild Horses

  Horses have lived wild on Pryor Mountain straddling the Wyoming-Montana border for a couple of centuries. But it wasn’t until 1968 that any federal protection was given to them. That year, US secretary of the interior Stewart Udall created the country’s first wild horse range, the 31,000-acre Pryor Mountain Wild Horse Range. The range was later expanded to 38,000 acres, but the horses are truly free to roam; there are no fences to keep them from wandering into adjacent national forest land. The Pryor Mountain horses are the only wild horses in the state of Montana, and the herd usually numbers around 160. The larger herd separates into smaller groups called “harems” with one stallion as the leader of the mares and younger horses.

  The best spot to see bands of these horses is along WY 37 in the Bighorn Canyon National Recreation Area. The company Pryor Wild does guided, daylong trips to view and photograph the horses. Founded by longtime Lovell locals Steve and Nancy Cerroni, Pryor Wild takes clients up Burnt Timber Ridge Road, which climbs 4,400 feet over 12 bumpy miles. At the top, expect to see wildflowers in addition to horses. If you want to horse-watch on your own, first stop at the Pryor Mountain Wild Mustang Center. They’ll have reports on where horses have most recently been spotted. They’ve also adopted some horses from the herd over the years.

  The Bureau of Land Management, which has jurisdiction over the range, asks that you stay more than 100 feet from the wild horses and never feed them. You can get as close as you’d like to the adopted horses at the center though. Bring the herd into your own home by watching the 1995 documentary film Cloud: Wild Stallion of the Rockies and its sequel, the 2003 documentary Cloud’s Legacy: The Wild Stallion Returns. (It is believed Cloud died in 2016.) In addition to horses, the Pryor Mountain Wild Horse Range is also home to mule deer, black bears, bighorn sheep, and coyotes. Mustang Center: 1106 Rd. 12, (307) 548-9453, pryormustangs.org. (307) 272-0364, www.pryorwild.com

  LOCAL LOWDOWN DIANE GRANGER, Board Member of the Pryor Mountain Wild Mustang Center

  Diane Granger and her late husband, Walter Granger Sr., moved from New Jersey to Lovell, Wyoming, in 1993. “We went from the most populated per capita area in the country to the least populated,” Diane says. “[There were] too many people there. We had always wanted to move out west.”

  Today Diane is a board member of the Pryor Mountain Wild Mustang Center. She has 13 acres abutting Bureau of Land Management (BLM) land, a simple log cabin, and many animals, including four horses adopted from the Pryor Mountain herd, about fifteen cats “that just showed up,” and four dogs. Until a couple of years ago, she also had a goat, Dolly, and a fifth dog. One day shortly before Wally died, he saw a goat and a puppy walk past their cabin. “‘We’re not keeping them,’ he told me,” Diane says. “The next day he was like, ‘What are we going to name them?’” They came up with Dolly and Blaze. “Everything that comes here stays here,” she says.

  Q: How’d you go from New Jersey to Animal Kingdom?

  DIANE GRANGER: When I was a kid I had a pinto pony named Patches. I loved all animals. Sometimes I prefer animals’ company to people’s company.

  Q: Of all the places in the West, how’d you settle on Lovell?

  DG: In the late 1970s, we looked around Colorado Springs and liked it. When we went back to look more seriously 5 years later, it had gotten so built up. We thought, “Why don’t we try Wyoming?” The next trip we flew into Jackson, rented a car, and drove around the whole state. We came down over the mountains and into Lovell and it was perfect. That’s when we bought our land.

  Q: Was adopting wild horses part of the plan from the beginning?

  DG: Yes. We built a barn so we’d be ready for them.

  Q: How do you go about buying a wild horse?

  DG: The BLM rounds them up and announces an auction. The year we were bidding, they rounded up forty-eight or something. They divide them up in holding pens by age and sex and you go and look at them. I went with my neighbor Jane. Charlotte, the horse I ended up buying, she looked at me and I was like, “I have to have that one.” I got her for $350 and my husband picked out a little black one, Christy. We got her for $125. No one even bid on her.

  Q: What do you do with them once you have them? Can you tame a wild horse?

  DG: It took a while. I’m not a cowboy. They are certainly different than a tame horse. I had some cowboys down the street train them a little for me. I eventually rode both of them. But I’ve been kicked, stepped on, bitten, and bucked off. It takes time and patience. And lots of love.

  Q: You’ve since adopted two more Pryor Mountain horses?

  DG: The center had adopted Kaibab and Liesl several years ago, but since Liesl is blind, she had problems in the field by the mustang center. She ran into a fence and got all chewed up. It was decided I should take them, so I built another barn and corral. They’ve adjusted quite well. Liesl knows her perimeter
s now and can run around. There’s no way either would have made it out on the range. I even have to keep them separated from Charlotte and Christy. Mares especially will pick on something that is handicapped. They’re doing really well in their own space though; Kaibab takes great care of Liesl. Now there are about 156 horses out there [in the range]. They’re all named. I concentrate on the horses in the Dry Head area, which isn’t up the mountain. I’m more comfortable going out in the bottom range. I could see one of these horses and tell you its name and how old it is.

  There are about 55,000 so-called wild horses in the United States today, but given that their ancestors were domesticated, perhaps the better term for them would be “feral.” North America was once home to truly wild horses, but they died out more than 10,000 years ago. Today’s “wild” horses are descended from domesticated horses brought to the continent by Spanish explorers in the 1500s and 1600s. Genetic testing shows the Pryor Mountain horses are descendants of colonial Spanish horses brought to the area by Native American tribes in the 1600s and 1700s. Markings hint at this heritage too. All Pryor Mountain horses have a long dorsal stripe and nearly all of them have “zebra” stripes on their legs. These are considered “primitive” markings.

  The only remaining species of truly wild horse in the world is the Przewalski’s horse. These horses, which were down to a population of twelve in the 1960s, now number about 2,000. About 350 of them live wild on reserves on the Mongolian steppe. The rest are in zoos or privately owned.

  YELLOWTAIL DAM

  Yellowtail Dam was constructed over a period of 6 years in the 1960s. The structure that created the 71-mile-long Bighorn Lake is named after Robert Summers Yellowtail Sr., a Crow Indian. Yellowtail was born in 1889, and, at age 4, he was sent off to a boarding school where Native American kids were punished for practicing any part of their culture. After graduating from high school, Yellowtail studied at the Extension Law School in L.A. and eventually earned a law degree from the University of Chicago via a correspondence course. His goal was to be an advocate and protector of his tribe and their rights. His work helped American Indians earn the right to vote in 1924. While he won many battles, Yellowtail lost the fight against the dam, which would later bear his name. He was one of the fiercest opponents of the project because the Bighorn Canyon was sacred to the Crow. Yellowtail remained active in fighting for the rights of the Crow and Native Americans through the 1970s and 1980s. He died in 1988 at age 98.

  Bighorn Canyon

  To get to Bighorn Canyon, a steep, paved road runs through sagebrush flats to a parking lot near the canyon’s rim. There’s a lot of sagebrush there and little else for miles in every direction. At a signed viewpoint, the earth precipitously drops away 2,000-some feet. Way, way down below is a sinuous lake. Teddy Roosevelt had known about this canyon. He once came out here to visit Cedarvale Ranch, owned by his friend Grosvener “Doc” Barry.

  Roosevelt’s visit to this canyon preceded the construction of the Yellowtail Dam on the Bighorn River. The dam created a 71-mile lake, Bighorn Lake, which looks more like a wide, gnarled river because the canyon is so narrow. Its water ranges in color from navy to aquamarine.

  About one-third of the Bighorn Canyon National Recreation Area (NRA) is in the Crow Indian Reservation. While permits are needed to access the reservation from the recreation area, the reservation welcomes visitors to the Crow Fair the third week of August each year. The fair, first started in 1918, is a celebration of Crow culture where tribal members erect as many as 1,500 tepees and visitors are welcome to learn about authentic Indian tribal traditions. www.teepeecapital.com

  The Bighorn Canyon NRA was established in 1966, just as construction on the dam was wrapping up. Within the recreation area, there are four historic dude ranches (Cedarvale Ranch included), as well as 27 miles of hiking trails and marinas that rent motorboats and kayaks. You can also sign up for a scenic cruise. The road along the canyon’s western rim is a gorgeous bike ride. 20 US 14, Lovell, (307) 548-5406, www.nps.gov/bica

  TRAIL TIDBITS

  The Bad Pass Trail has been used for over 10,000 years, first by indigenous people, then, starting in the 1800s, by fur trappers, explorers, and miners. It is a sacred site for Native Americans and was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1975. Most of the trail is no longer recognizable, and it is illegal to walk or drive along it. Three hundred cairns and as many as a thousand tipi rings remain though. The trail runs across the western side of Bighorn Canyon.

  Along the Sullivan Knob’s trail in the recreation area is a spot where you can stand on the canyon’s rim and shout and get a triple echo in reply.

  Chief Joseph Scenic Byway

  Life in Wyoming can be tough. Take the Chief Joseph Scenic Byway (WY 296), one of the three scenic byways in this area. In most any other state, the Chief Joseph drive would be well known. Famous even. But in Wyoming, where there’s the Beartooth Pass (page 76) and the Buffalo Bill Cody (page 151) scenic drives to compete with, it’s often overlooked. Overlooking it is a mistake though.

  The Chief Joseph Scenic Byway roughly follows the route its namesake took with 1,000 members of his Nez Perce tribe in 1877 as they headed for Canada and away from the chasing US Cavalry. It winds through the Two Dot Ranch, one of the oldest ranches in the area and once believed to be the largest ranch in the country. Today it’s about 52,000 acres. You’re not driving for long before you can see a series of switchbacks cut across the face of the red butte in front of you. After a 3,000-foot climb, you arrive at 8,060-foot-tall Dead Indian Pass, which protectively watches over one of the least visited bits of northern Wyoming, Sunlight Basin.

  In Sunlight Basin are two hard-working rivers. Directly at the western base of Dead Indian Pass is Sunlight Creek, which, over its life, has carved a canyon between 200 and 300 feet deep. The Clarks Fork of the Yellowstone River is even more impressive. It is Wyoming’s only Wild and Scenic designated river, and the gorge it has carved is as deep as 1,200 feet in places.

  For the last miles of this scenic byway, it looks like you’re headed straight into the Beartooth Mountains. Perfectly framed in the center of the view is the range’s namesake peak, 12,351-foot Beartooth Mountain. The Crow Indians named this mountain Na Piet Say, which literally translated means “the bear’s tooth.” scenicbyways.info

  Combine this drive with Beartooth Pass. Starting with a turn onto WY 296, follow the road 46 miles to US 212, aka the Beartooth Highway. Take a left here and you go to Cooke City and Yellowstone’s Northeast Entrance. Go right and you’re on your way up to Beartooth Pass, heading toward Red Lodge, Montana.

  SUNLIGHT BASIN AND THE SUNLIGHT CREEK BRIDGE

  Sunlight Basin was named by two early fur traders. Upon reaching the basin, which took significant physical exertion as they were there long before any road, the traders exclaimed something like, “the only thing that can get into this valley most of the year is sunlight.” They’re right. The west side of Dead Indian Pass is steeper than the east, and at the bottom is the canyon carved by Sunlight Creek. This canyon is so deep it takes nothing less than the state’s highest bridge to span it. Built in 1986, the Sunlight Creek Bridge is 285 feet above the creek below. People joke the creek is wishfully named. Its canyon is so deep and the sides so steep that sunlight rarely reaches it.

  PART 4 WEST ENTRANCE

  Within a 100-mile radius from Yellowstone’s West Entrance near West Yellowstone, Montana, you can find the seed potato capital of the world, the country’s second-largest Superfund site (a hazardous waste site that the Environmental Protection Agency has identified for long-term remediation because of its impact on human health or the environment), one of the hippest mountain towns around, a 90-foot-tall statue of the Virgin Mary, dinosaur fossils, and the largest National Historic District in the country. The area surrounding the park’s West Entrance is likely the most diverse. Some cities here pre-date Yellowstone’s founding and they developed economies separate from the park. Missing cold-brew coffee ma
de from single-origin beans? Head to Bozeman, Montana. If you’re biking the Ashton-Tetonia Rail Trail, you’ll see potato fields (and little else) stretching to the horizon. Even ghost towns have become vibrant destinations for travelers. In the 1860s, Nevada City and Virginia City sprung up along Alder Gulch after gold was discovered there. Today about 140 people live in the area and tens of thousands of people visit to experience life in a Victorian-era mining town. It’s home to the Virginia City Players, the oldest continuously operating summer stock theater company west of the Mississippi.

  Right off the interstate, Butte was one of the richest cities west of the Mississippi a century ago. Today its mining boom days are long gone and the city is decidedly depressed. But, what it lacks in polish, it makes up for with a downtown stacked with historic, brick buildings and an admirable originality. How many cities would think to turn a Superfund site into a tourist attraction and charge admission? Viewing it is worth every penny. Hang out in most of the cities or towns in this chapter and you’ll feel millions of miles away from Yellowstone.

  ROAD TRIP 1 BUTTE

  For 16 years, I sped past Butte on the interstate. I hadn’t heard many—or any—good things about it. Then in 2014, my boyfriend and I spent a long weekend there and we both fell in love. Montana and Wyoming are celebrated for their idyllic, natural beauty and cute small towns. Butte is a mining town gone bust with the country’s second-largest Superfund site right on the edge of downtown. To write that Butte has rough edges is an understatement. But spend time here—eating a Cornish pasty, walking around the country’s largest National Historic District, or hiking in mountains that offer views of both the Berkeley Pit (the Superfund site) and, in the distance, Yellowstone—and tell me there’s not beauty in the city’s determinedly stubborn spirit, which goes back 150 years.